Should the US Treasury mint a Trillion-dollar coin?

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The Secretary [of the Treasury] may mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretarys discretion, may prescribe from time to time.

The plan with this law was that the Treasury could make real commemorative coins, like the kind you see sold on television, that are legal tender. But since the denominations and other details are up to the Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner (or, soon, Jack Lew), can take a lump of platinum, set to it with an embossing seal and a hammer, and mint a trillion-dollar coin. Or a gazillion-dollar onebut the suggestion on the table is that he stick to a trillion, then deposit it in the Treasurys account at the Fed, where it would be booked as an asset. With that reckoned against liabilities, wed be well below the debt ceiling. The Treasury could pay everyoneno default, no Medicare cuts.

 

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/01/a-platinum-coin-as-big-as-the-ritz.html

  Quote

But contrary to all these people who say that this is a childish, non-adult proposal put forth by impish trolls, it's actually quite the opposite. It may be the most important fiscal policy debate you'll ever seen in your lifetime, because it gets right to the nature of what is money.

This question is central to any discussion about a country's monetary and fiscal policy, and yet it's almost never discussed, and virtually nobody understands it.

Almost everyone talking about fiscal policy imagines money to be a commodity of sorts that we can "run out" of if we don't spend it carefully. In this sense, although we've long gotten rid of the gold standard, we're still shackled with a gold standard mentality, where we think of money as a scarce natural resource that we need to husband carefully, lest one day the bond vigilantes show up at our door, causing us to go broke.

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-mint-the-coin-debate-could-be-the-most-important-fiscal-policy-debate-youll-ever-see-in-your-life-2013-1

So the serious side of this debate is just about whether or not america should "print money" to pay off it's debts?

This is a serious debate about a trillion-dollar platinum coin.

Fucking retarded if you ask me.

Lolinflation

losing a 20 dollar bill is bad enough...

Give what back?

  On 1/13/2013 at 5:26 PM, AdieuErsatzEnnui said:

losing a 20 dollar bill is bad enough...

Oh man, just imagine the chaos should they happen to lose the coin... but then, couldn't we just mint another one?

If the solution to debt is to just simply print/mint more money, why the hell haven't we just printed off a shit ton of coins already?... What I really don't get is how can we just print some stupid coin and just say "Hey, I made this thing, it's worth a trillion dollars okay?". Money is weird.

Well this should be interesting.

skip to 0:50

  On 1/13/2013 at 6:46 PM, ghOsty said:

  On 1/13/2013 at 5:26 PM, AdieuErsatzEnnui said:

losing a 20 dollar bill is bad enough...

Oh man, just imagine the chaos should they happen to lose the coin... but then, couldn't we just mint another one?

 

If the solution to debt is to just simply print/mint more money, why the hell haven't we just printed off a shit ton of coins already?... What I really don't get is how can we just print some stupid coin and just say "Hey, I made this thing, it's worth a trillion dollars okay?". Money is weird.

This whole argument makes me wonder whether they fear citizen recognition that the money system is inherently useless by pulling a coin out of their ass to pay for everything.

What the hell is money then? What is debt?

  On 1/13/2013 at 7:35 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

  On 1/13/2013 at 6:46 PM, ghOsty said:

  On 1/13/2013 at 5:26 PM, AdieuErsatzEnnui said:

losing a 20 dollar bill is bad enough...

Oh man, just imagine the chaos should they happen to lose the coin... but then, couldn't we just mint another one?

 

If the solution to debt is to just simply print/mint more money, why the hell haven't we just printed off a shit ton of coins already?... What I really don't get is how can we just print some stupid coin and just say "Hey, I made this thing, it's worth a trillion dollars okay?". Money is weird.

 

This whole argument makes me wonder whether they fear citizen recognition that the money system is inherently useless by pulling a coin out of their ass to pay for everything.

 

What the hell is money then? What is debt?

Exactly, if we can just create things and arbitrarily give them value, then why the hell can't we all just be rich? It tends to lead me to thoughts about class warfare and such. I'd expand on this more but I haven't sorted it all out in my head enough to put it to words yet. The concept of this coin is just absurd to me though.

  On 1/13/2013 at 7:42 PM, ghOsty said:

  On 1/13/2013 at 7:35 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

  On 1/13/2013 at 6:46 PM, ghOsty said:

  On 1/13/2013 at 5:26 PM, AdieuErsatzEnnui said:

losing a 20 dollar bill is bad enough...

Oh man, just imagine the chaos should they happen to lose the coin... but then, couldn't we just mint another one?

 

If the solution to debt is to just simply print/mint more money, why the hell haven't we just printed off a shit ton of coins already?... What I really don't get is how can we just print some stupid coin and just say "Hey, I made this thing, it's worth a trillion dollars okay?". Money is weird.

 

This whole argument makes me wonder whether they fear citizen recognition that the money system is inherently useless by pulling a coin out of their ass to pay for everything.

 

What the hell is money then? What is debt?

Exactly, if we can just create things and arbitrarily give them value, then why the hell can't we all just be rich? It tends to lead me to thoughts about class warfare and such. I'd expand on this more but I haven't sorted it all out in my head enough to put it to words yet. The concept of this coin is just absurd to me though.

i mean seriously, if they implement this, this means the concept of national debt is nonsense.....so why wouldn't individual debt? because the national polity determines this.

how do they determine this, etc. etc.

Given that Congress already has a record low of 9% approval rating or something like that, this could (and quite honestly should) be disastrous for both parties in their representatives.

but then again I'm no expert on fiscal policy.

This is a great analogy:

  Quote

Krugman and others also say that, as crazy as this sounds, it’s less crazy than Congress forcing the country into a default by not raising the debt ceiling. Krugman does acknowledge that it may be “undignified”: “Here’s how to think about that: we have a situation in which a terrorist may be about to walk into a crowded room and threaten to blow up a bomb he’s holding. It turns out, however, that the Secret Service has figured out a way to disarm this maniac—a way that for some reason will require that the Secretary of the Treasury briefly wear a clown suit,” he writes. “And the response of the nervous Nellies is, ‘My god, we can’t dress the secretary up as a clown!’ ”

like, Im not denying that this could fix the debt problem, but Im talking about the moral implications and hence political repercussions.

Assuming most people are not mentally incapacitated, seeing that their government can deal with debts by making an object and pronouncing its worth on the spot, solely to extract themselves from a wobbly financial situation would practically prove Marxist valuation theory correct.

Essentially, the surplus value is no longer even tied to excess production by the proles...right? So wtf is the point of valuing industrial output?

The moral relevancy of the whole thing: why can they do it but we can't? Especially considering the massive debt crises with the housing bubbles, tuition costs, and healthcare costs?

i dunno, I definitely get the class warfare part, because this is essentially saying we can break the fourth wall and alter the rules to suit the governing population, but not for the governed.

My head is exploding from the implications.

goDel or someone come in here and shut me down. I really need to make sense of this.

The government should invest in secret mining expeditions to the moon.

For anyone feeling confused by this, don't worry, even economists are saying this is an unusual situation where the usual rules don't apply.

Krugman has a couple of easy to understand blog posts about it:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/be-ready-to-mint-that-coin/

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/debt-in-a-time-of-zero/

Now this is not to say that he's 100% correct, because I'm still not sure how the US can avoid skyrocketing inflation rates, but at least if the problem is a choice between going over the fiscal cliff or minting this ridiculous coin, the choice is easy.

Also, the reason people can't just print money themselves is because of the matter of good faith. Remembering that money is a substitute for bartering goods/services might help.

Let's put it this way in a fictional conversation:

Smetty - "I have 5 dollars that i printed myself, can I exchange them for your widget?"

chen (knowing that Smetty is a man of character): "Yes, I believe 5 of your dollars is a fair trade for my widget."

chen then goes to some guy (we'll call him CarpRekkids) and wants to purchase a PearSquasher record.

CarpRekkids: "What the hell are these Smetty dollars? How do I know these are of any value? Fack off"

chen: *sadface*

Now bread and the other post-scarcity advocates will say this is just showing how the concept of the money system is flawed, but the simple reality is that we are not "post-scarcity", unless the laws of thermodynamics have been suspended since I went to bed last night.

  On 1/13/2013 at 7:53 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

like, Im not denying that this could fix the debt problem, but Im talking about the moral implications and hence political repercussions.

 

 

Assuming most people are not mentally incapacitated, seeing that their government can deal with debts by making an object and pronouncing its worth on the spot, solely to extract themselves from a wobbly financial situation would practically prove Marxist valuation theory correct.

 

Essentially, the surplus value is no longer even tied to excess production by the proles...right? So wtf is the point of valuing industrial output?

 

The moral relevancy of the whole thing: why can they do it but we can't? Especially considering the massive debt crises with the housing bubbles, tuition costs, and healthcare costs?

 

i dunno, I definitely get the class warfare part, because this is essentially saying we can break the fourth wall and alter the rules to suit the governing population, but not for the governed.

 

My head is exploding from the implications.

 

goDel or someone come in here and shut me down. I really need to make sense of this.

i agree with you. i think it's ridiculous that they're saying "lol normal rules don't apply." yes they do! how could printing a trillion dollar coin not devalue the dollar? it's fucked up!

Too bad it won't be a trillion dolla bill so I could light a phat blunt wit it.

Well, it's a basic economic concept is that money is only given value when people accept that it has value.

is it still possible to earn some decent bitcoins nowadays?